Nice effects though.

hyped garbage

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

. . . which gave rise to one of the great lines of all gangster movies, "Can this be the end of Rico?" That's the question that assistant district attorney Ferguson's star witness, Joseph Rico, wails after Bogie lets him slip nine stories above the pavement. Ferguson's clunky caper leaves so much room for improvement, it inspired key elements of most subsequent Alfred Hitchcock movies. For instance, the ludicrously complicated murder-by-stranger premise of THE ENFORCER is beautifully simplified by Hitch to "Criss-Cross" for STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. A marsh mysteriously preserving the eyes of corpses for weeks on end becomes the more plausible bog which swallows Jamie Leigh Curtis' mom in the middle of PSYCHO. The constantly-spreading circle of connections to be "rubbed out" around "Albert Mendoza" here foreshadows the necktie killer in FRENZY. A better question might be, "Which later Hitchcock flicks were NOT heavily influenced by THE ENFORCER?

Finally after lots of hard work, Assistant D.A. Martin Ferguson has a good case against Murder Inc big wig, Albert Mendoza. But while Mendoza is in jail, the man lined up to testify against him loses his nerve and falls to his death, thus leaving Ferguson little to no time to rebuild a case against the crime lord.The Enforcer is based upon the whistle blowing of one Abe Reles. Who opened eyes up to an organised crime mob called Murder Inc. Fusing that period of history with the subsequent Kefauver Committee investigations that followed Reles' reveals, The Enforcer is a tough and gritty picture that many view as the key switch from Noir into the grizzled crime obsessed 1950s. At the time of writing this I have yet to have it confirmed, but it's thought that this Bretaigne Windust directed picture is the first mainstream picture to deal with the complexities of organised crime? Certainly the dialogue is now common speak (courtesy of Martin Rackin (Riffraff 1947), but back in 1951 it surely would have raised eyebrows and intrigued the watching public.Excellently photographed in stark black and white by Robert Burks, who of course is well known to Hitchcock devotees, the picture positively seeps with an underworld vibe, perhaps even coming into the realms of being documentary in structure. Starring Humphrey Bogart (Ferguson), Everett Sloane (Mendoza) and the excellent, and wonderfully named, Zero Mostel (Big Babe Lazich), it's also thought that Raoul Walsh had quite a hand in the final product. This to my knowledge, is still unconfirmed, but when viewing the picture as a whole, it certainly boasts the feel of Walsh's better known pictures. Highly engrossing and a template movie of sorts, The Enforcer is definitely one to catch if at all possible. 7.5/10

Enforcer, The (1951) *** (out of 4)Warner Brothers made Humphrey Bogart a star with films such as The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and High Sierra but early in his career Bogart was playing the smaller role in gangster films like The Roaring Twenties and Angels with Dirty Faces 1951's The Enforcer would mark the end to that type of gangster film from the studio but it started a rather unique and overlooked portion of Bogart's career. This isn't your typical gangster film but the story is based on the real life case of a Murder, Inc. gang.District Attorney Martin Ferguson (Bogart) has spent the last four years of his life trying to bust a gang of hired killers who have left hundreds of bodies lying around. The case was a hard one to crack because there were never any witnesses and none of the murders had a motive. Finally, Joseph Rico agrees to testify against the big man of the operation as long as Ferguson offers him protection. The night before the big trial Rico begins to lose his nerve because there have already been two attempts on his life.Ferguson finally calms Rico down and gets him back on his side but within minutes Rico tries to escape from the window and falls to his death. With seven hours before court starts Ferguson finds himself without a witness, which means the guy running this deadly operation will be back on the streets very soon. With nothing left to do Ferguson decides to go back over the evidence in hope that a name or something will pop up so he can take a true case to court. We then get various flashbacks to those in the gang and the story, which lead Rico to agree to testify.The Enforcer is a throwback to the 1930's with pictures such as the Dick Tracy series but it has a blend of film noir, which makes it worth watching even though the end results aren't as great as one would hope. This film was one of the last of its type and Bogart is as great as usual playing the tough as nails D.A. who'll stop at nothing to get the big case solved. The biggest downfall to the film is its screenplay, which introduces many characters but none of them very interesting.I think the films biggest problem is the way it's told in a flashback form. The mystery in the film is supposed to be breaking the case but the case is pretty much broken within the first five minutes of the film. The tension then goes to the final seven hours before the court case when the D.A. must find a witness to put on the stand but this here doesn't work because the majority of the characters aren't too interesting and they certainly don't bring any extra life to the movie. Most of them just point fingers at other men and then those men point more fingers until the end when we are pretty much at the start of the film. Out of nowhere Bogart discovers the missing key to the case, which is a very good moment and leads to a tense ending. It's just too bad the rest of the stories weren't as interesting.Bogart is very good in the role, although this is the type of character he could play while sleeping. Bogart really doesn't bring anything new to the table but even the old Bogart is great enough to keep the interest level high. By the old Bogart I'm talking about the guy who'll slap around anyone to get the information he wants and we get plenty of that here including a wonderful scene inside an insane asylum where Bogart has to crack a witness. This toughness is what made Bogart a legend and he uses this throughout the film. The rest of the players are pretty much cliché stuff and don't deserve to stand next to Bogart.Where the film does work is its brilliant opening and closing. The opening, in the dark streets, is wonderfully shot and the director is able to get some wonderful tension out of the scene. The opening lasts around fifteen minutes and while we know something bad is going to happen the director is able to build the suspense by carrying everything out. The ending has a nice surprise twist that will catch most people off guard and then it's a chase between Bogart to get to the witness before the hired killers do. Had the beginning of the film had just a portion of the suspense like the opening and closing then I'm sure The Enforcer would have been better remembered today. As it stand, the film is nothing great but there's enough good stuff to make it highly recommended.

Literally one of the darkest of noir films, though not everyone's favorite it seems.THE ENFORCER is criticized in several comments posted on IMDb in part for its portraying cops learning code words such as "hit" and "contract", for the first time.The words are a minor springboard device which aren't crucial to the evidence. Eye-witness testimony is what the cops badly need to put the top man in the chair.The historical context loosely linking the plot to Murder, Inc. hardly diminishes the ability of the film to hold up as an edgy crime suspense drama some 55 years later. It's a movie with a great ensemble cast of character actors relishing the juicy dialog.Of course viewers today aren't going to drop their jaws over the cinematic debut of words that have long since become common in the colloquial lexicon.Especially when there are plenty of great lines in the film to enjoy, and even mimic over and over again:Such as Ted De Corsia's "He ain't human!", "I gotta get-out-of-here!" and "You know what to use. Use it!"And the meeting between the #1 man and his #2 man, whose repartee enriched with sinister gestures is well worth rediscovering:Mendoza- "I've been worked over by some of the best, and you're just what I'm looking for." Rico -"What? You want some more?" Mendoza - "I can use a guy like you!"Rico - "You must be nuts!" Mendoza - "I've still got a dime left. C'mon, I'll buy you a cup of coffee!"Mendoza - "Someday you'll realize I'm a great man. I'll make you a rich man." Rico - "I must have kicked you in the head!"Mendoza - "This is my first contract. I'm getting paid $500 for the hit." Rico - "You'll never have $500 as long as you live!"My favorite shock scene is when a hit man realizes he's about to be "taken care of" by an old crony, he makes a desperate break for it into the night, letting out a blood-curdling scream.THE ENFORCER is not presented as a bio or semi-documentary at all, really. There is no narration, no final moral. Bogey doesn't indirectly lecture the viewers, instead he's picking his own brain as Ferguson. Though he's a dedicated lawman, Bogey's not playing a preachy reformer as did John McIntire (Police Commissioner Hardy), quite admirably to be sure, in the 1950 John Huston crime caper classic, THE ASPHALT JUNGLE. ASPHALT JUNGLE and FORCE OF EVIL are also films with scenes of double-crosses and back- stabbing that I enjoy as much as THE ENFORCER.Relentlessly grim, and for the most part original, THE ENFORCER stands on it's own.The ending is a bit anti-climatic only because it wraps up so quickly after all the tension and flashbacks have reached the anticipated moment of the "pay-off", so I rate it a 9 out of 10. I had no problem with the way the story unfolds as we are given pieces of the puzzle. The flashbacks get better and better so my advice is stick with it. Underrated gem, deserving better than the reserved reviews and short shrift it often gets.Zero Mostel, Everett Sloane, Ted De Corsia, Jack Lambert etc. all contribute what are perhaps among their best, if brief, performances on film,TWO ICE-PICKS, WAY UP!